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Digital: Special Report

The UK's largest ad agencies have got into a bit of a spin about the feature on this page. Their digital departments are evidently not their favourite topic of conversation. This is because, for all their garbled attempts to claim otherwise, most are embarrassingly inept when it comes to digital ads.

Go to a digital awards show and you'll be lucky to spot anyone from
advertising's old guard. This is partly because few of them produce
award-winning digital work, if any at all. It is also because few feel
comfortable cavorting with geeky digital types.

The industry doesn't seem to know how to face up to its digital
insecurities. Some shops form loose affiliations with sibling agencies.
Some fashion joint ventures with specialists. Only a handful have
dedicated in-house teams. So it's hardly surprising that, according to a
recent survey by the Haystack Group (Campaign, 15 September), only 4 per
cent of clients feel their agencies are on top of what's going on in
digital.

Not everyone is getting it wrong. Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Mother fare
well in our school-report-style feature, while Ogilvy, a regular in
Campaign's Turkey of the Week column for its TV ads, arguably has
adland's best digital capability.

Media agencies do digital better. We score creative agencies, on
average, an "adequate" 3.6 out of 7 for their digital prowess. Media
agencies average 4.5, almost "good". No wonder more than a quarter of
clients in the Haystack survey feel their media agencies are getting to
grips with the discipline. "The message we are getting is that media
agencies take a broader view and so have invested heavily on digital
planning and strategy," Suki Thompson, the head of Haystack, says. "They
'get' where the audiences are going."

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